Reflections on "Cancel Canada Day"

By Fareed Khan 

There have been growing calls by many Canadians to "Cancel Canada Day" since the discovery of the remains of 215 Indigenous children in an unmarked mass grave at a former residential school site in Kamloops, BC.  Since May the remains of 1143 Indigenous children in total have been found in unmarked burial sites at former residential schools in British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, with the largest number (715) being found at the former Marieval Indian Residential School in Saskatchewan.

In light of these horrible discoveries the “Cancel Canada Day” hashtag has been trending, to the dismay of many Canadians who see this as an effort to tear down Canada and eliminate the July 1st holiday.  But this could not be further from the truth.

The vast majority of Canadians take for granted the advantages and opportunities that living in Canada offers us.  However, this has not been the case for Indigenous people since long before Confederation.  From the arrival of white Europeans in the land that became Canada into the 21st Century, colonial and Canadian governments put into effect policies meant to exterminate First Peoples in order to remove them from their traditional lands that were coveted by colonial and Canadian political leaders.  In effect they were genocidal policies.

This history of Indigenous genocide and the recent discovery of the Indigenous children’s remains are at the crux of calls to cancel celebrations for Canada Day 2021, and mark it differently in the future.  In other words, it is about doing things differently for July 1st, rather than eliminating Canada Day.

In the years following World War 2 the issue of genocide was so urgent that the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Genocide Convention as its first treaty (a treaty which Canadian diplomats helped draft).  Under Article 2 of the Convention, it states: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

• Killing members of the group; 
• Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
• Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; 
• Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; 
• Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

The inconvenient and ugly truth is that all the crimes outlined in the Genocide Convention were committed on Canadian soil against Indigenous people.  In light of this why would they want to be reminded annually with a national celebration about this genocide, as well as about stolen land, abducted children who were sexually abused, tortured and killed, and the fact that they live in a country that still does not accord them full human rights.

The discovery of the Indigenous children’s burial sites and unmarked graves has also woken something across the country in non-Indigenous people.  Anyone with an ounce of compassion feels the pain that Indigenous people are feeling, and they are thinking about what they can do to stand in solidarity them.  It is from this that the call to “Cancel Canada Day” has sprouted and gained momentum.

Marking Canada Day from this year forward cannot be as before.  It can no longer be about cheering the creation of Canada with parties and festive fireworks.  Because the reality is that this nation was founded on white supremacy and genocidal policies that attempted to wipe out Indigenous people in this land.

Non-Indigenous settler Canadians can no longer ignore the very ugly truth about how this country was created and how it got to where it is today.  All of us have to acknowledge this very ugly reality, pressure politicians to officially recognize that genocide was committed against Indigenous people, and make sure that future Canada Day events are done differently.  We have to concede that we live as we do in this prosperous land because Indigenous people paid a deadly and horrific price at the hands of people who saw them as less than human.

Moving forward our relationship with Indigenous people must take into account the truth of Canada’s very dirty past, and make "reconciliation" mean something more than political platitudes uttered by the white privileged men and women who govern this country.  It is the right thing to do.   

It is the just thing to do.  It is the human thing to do.

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